Boston

The impression of Boston after a sleepless night was quite different. This attractive city on the Atlantic coast, which has as many inhabitants as Montenegro, is full of young people who have come from all over to attend one of the famous universities (Harvard, MIT, Tufts, Boston University, Boston College, Northeastern...) to the realization of their dreams. "In America, one feels least like a foreigner" - Lara told me in Chicago, and in Boston I realized that it was true. I heard about Boston a long time ago, and now that I've met him, I can't figure out what the famous Boston dentist Doc Holliday was looking for in the Wild West. What kind of hornet persuaded him to leave his horse to ride a donkey. And that, probably the most famous gunslinger in the world, in the meantime became a prototype for literary and film characters of adventurers, born with an illness and disinterested in life, but with an embedded chip for justice and honesty. I have already written about the Zaganjors, Emma and Matti and their son Miki, in whom all the Rams of the world can trust if the road takes them to Boston. They welcomed Lara two years ago when she arrived and she stays with them whenever "an ancient sadness breaks her". And when she thinks of beans or some other home-made dish. Emma showed me "Lara's room" in their tastefully decorated house on a Boston hill and the basement in which they were stationed when the storm "Sandy" hit Boston and in which, it seems to me, not even an atomic bomb could do anything to them. During dinner, and Meti masterfully prepared sea bass, we mostly talked about Bar and Barani and the past local elections. The Internet is truly a miracle. Barians in the world know more about Bar than we who live in it! And Dr. Aleksandar Videnović, an excellent student of the Bar Gymnasium and a student of the Faculty of Medicine in Belgrade, now a respected doctor at Harvard, who deals with sleep disorders, with whom I drank Argentinian red wine in an Italian restaurant, knows everything about political and other events in Montenegro. and the region. In the Boston Church of Saint Sava, Lara met Pajović, Jelena and Milutin - Mić, a young married couple from Podgorica who came here in search of a better life. Mico was the first to graduate from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering in Podgorica with an average grade of ten! Instead of keeping him at all costs, Montenegro let him go, as easily as if he were a grocer. Why? Mico doesn't like to talk about it, but I think it's because he wasn't suitable and he's not inclined to compromise with those worse than him. This spiritual man is a PhD student at the prestigious MIT University. I am convinced that he will make a career in America very quickly, especially when Jelena, the pillar of the house, is behind him. Although, it won't be easy for them. America is a paradise for enterprising artisans and so-called small businessmen who, with a little luck, can get rich, while educated people are forced to work hard to live well or very well, but rarely in abundance. A few months ago, Jelena and Mićo had a son, Peter, who adores Lara, and she adores him. We had a pleasant time in their home. It was graduation season in Boston at the beginning of June. Endless columns of satisfied students and happy parents flowed towards the colorful main park (Public Garden) where, under the monument to George Washington, flashes were constantly shining. We also walked by the Charles River and Copley Square, near which a bomb was planted last year during the marathon. I shuddered, remembering the fear we felt on the other side of the world, in Bar. Fortunately, the fear was short-lived. In Boston, a willful traveler can shout "Taxi!" for three days. - no one will react, unlike in New York, where really, like in the movies, you raise your hand and a taxi appears, seemingly out of nowhere. Americans are fascinated by everything old, with tradition. If good old Rizo could move his kebab shop from Starobar to Boston, he would be broke. There is a Starbucks on every corner and in Boston, where one afternoon, drinking coffee, I watched the passers-by on the main shopping street of Newbury, chatted with Lara and enjoyed listening to Alela Diane, an American singer with a wistful voice. Boston is more expensive than both Chicago and New York. I don't think there's anything cheaper than $4,99 out there. In Boston, I finished Nikola Amaniti's excellent novel "As God Commands". I read in the evening, before going to bed and every morning I woke up thinking that I was in Italy, because the action of the novel takes place there. In the magnificent Church of Saint Sava, which the Serbian Orthodox Church bought from the Catholic Church a few years ago, the promotion of my best book, the novel "Nothing Has Changed" and "Bar Stories" was held. Father Aleksandar Vlajković, a beautiful, God-pleasing man, delivered the opening letter. After the promotion, which caused a few tears, the attendees asked questions, so we stayed in pleasant company for two full hours. And after that sublime event, I wouldn't be a former "pspovac" (failed law student, as my brother called me for years), if I didn't persuade Lara to buy another scratcher. She didn't put up much of a fight (a gene is a gene, apparently) and we took four pieces at two dollars each. The ones I scratched with a cent I found on the street in Chicago didn't win, but Lara's, which she scratched with a euro she found last Christmas in a garlic bar, she scratched $40, which we were happy about as if it said 4.000 ! My grandfather, and her great-grandfather, Nikola, would be proud to know that a century after he suffered a poker fiasco, his descendants, on the same American soil, tried their gambling luck and were in the black. I will conclude the American trilogy in the next blog, with a story about New York, the center of the world.

* * * At the World Cup in football, I support, as always, Brazil. This time it's even more heartwarming because of the two "cariocas". The best player Neimar looks to me like a football fan from Stari Bar, and the selector Skolari looks like a winegrower from Crmnica.

* * * I liked what I read on a website, which was allegedly said by Zoran Radmilović: "When you die, you don't know you've died and it's not hard for you. It's hard for others. It's the same when you're stupid.”

* * * And on the eve of these last May elections, various directors and officials, so-called activists, compiled lists, guessed how the employees of their company would vote and delivered it to the right place. Humiliations never end in this sold out country...

* * * The rain, in the middle of June, annoyed me for several reasons, but mostly because it crushed the cherries, the beautiful, juicy, bright red, marsh ones...